Before heading out for a night on the town, guys might want to make sure they have their dance moves down. A recent study showed women rated these particular dance moves higher than others.
The study — conducted by Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK, and published in Biology Letters — found that women rated male dancers higher when they performed large, variable movements of their head, neck and torso. Male dancers were also considered “good” dancers if they displayed fast bending and twisting of the right knee. Study lead Nick Neave, from the School of Life Sciences at Northumbria University, used motion-capture technology to record different males dancing in different ways. To avoid bias, when the females were asked to identify which dancers showed strong dancing ability, they only saw the plain grey avatars you can see in the above video from Business Insider’s YouTube channel. Neave explains:
In humans, dance is a set of intentional, rhythmic, culturally influenced, non-verbal body movements that are considered to be an important aspect of sexuality and courtship attraction… Dancing ability, particularly that of men, may serve as a signal of male mate quality in terms of physical strength, prenatal androgenization and symmetry, and thus affect women’s perceptions of men’s attractiveness.
Case in point: Patrick Swayze in “Dirty Dancing”. Of course, there’s absolutely no guarantee that a guy swinging his head around and twisting his right knee will make him more attractive, but the rhythmic use of these types of moves could help a guy with two left feet seem much more skilled. So, guys, if you plan on cutting up a rug this weekend, consider adding a few of these moves into your repertoire.
Male dance moves that catch a woman’s eye [The Journal Biology Letters via Useful Science]
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